


Skeleton Key

by thingsbaker



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Age of Ultron, F/M, M/M, NatPOV, WhyNot, post-AoU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 02:26:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4373672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingsbaker/pseuds/thingsbaker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha's always fit in, wherever she's gone, but here -- it's like they understand her. It's strange. It's good.</p><p>It's mostly strange.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skeleton Key

**Author's Note:**

> Based loosely on the lyrics of the excellent Dessa song "Skeleton Key," particularly:
> 
>  
> 
> _I've found work and welcome everywhere I've been,_  
>  'cuz everyone's got someplace they wanna be let in.

She’s found work everywhere she’s gone. That’s never a problem. Everyone has a secret; everyone wants to know someone else’s secrets. That’s her job. They haven’t invented a door, a system, a man that won’t give up a secret with the right pressure. 

Natasha knows about pressure.

This, though, this Avengers team that’s assembled now, she doesn’t know how to work in it. There’s enough to do, sure. S.H.I.E.L.D. may be gone, but it’s never really gone, and Nick has orders every time she sees him. But it’s not real work, not with the grand-scale purpose that she used to have. Or, rather, it’s the same purpose every day -- saving the world -- but now there’s no end-game. There’s no escape. They can never just win. 

There’s running away, but alone, she’d be a rogue. She’s not ready to go backwards yet, but forwards -- well, most days, it feels like treading water, just to wake up and save the world again, and again, and again. 

It’s not that she thinks about Bruce every day. She’s not pining. This is the typical post-mission let down, combined with, maybe, a little maturation, and the still life-changing effects of her info dump during the Triskelion collapse. That’s what this is. It’s not loneliness. It’s… adjustment.

* * *

Steve worries about her. 

It’s adorable, really, in a way that only Steve can be adorable: a solid, muscular hulk of compressed, righteous worry that hovers over her shoulder while she’s carefully disassembling an electro-impulse dart that didn’t fire correctly in their last training.

“If you wanted some time off,” he starts, finally, having held up the same wall next to her for a solid five minutes.

“I’m taking time off tonight,” she says, concentrating on untangling the three colored wires. The problem is miniscule, a frayed connection. No saving this one, but Steve can’t see that. She keeps twisting the wires. 

“Yeah?” He sounds so hopeful she almost scowls. Almost. It worries her that her control might be slipping that much. “Big plans?”

“My big plans went down in the Indian Ocean,” she says, and almost feels Steve flinch. “Don’t waste your worry on me, all right, Rogers? Go get yourself some plans, then come back and talk.”

He hovers for another long minute, then puts one big hand on her shoulder, squeezes, and says, “See you at breakfast.”

She spends the evening in the kitchens. It’s been a long time since she did this, really got her hands dirty, measuring and kneading and, worst of all, waiting. The air is thick with dark flours and molasses and yeast, and for four hours, she does only this, bakes loaf after loaf of the crusty, sweet-bitter bread of her childhood. They’ll serve it in the cafeteria tomorrow, labeled blandly Russian Bread, and everyone here will eat it because they trust her.

It’s staggering.

She eats warm bread that night, sitting on the floor of her living room, drinking a cold beer from its glass bottle, feeling the weight of their trust like a cape, like a cowl, like a stone that could sink her into the sea.

* * *

She sees Nick a few times a month. He’s in and out of the facility, liaising with the other branch of S.H.I.E.L.D., Coulson’s secret team. Only Natasha knows about them, and this is a trust that she understands: she’s been trusted to keep secrets from those closest to her for years.

Yet now it feels strange. It feels different. Not -- not like betrayal, necessarily, and she knows what that feels like. This just feels awkward, like turning a corner in a familiar building and finding an unfamiliar wall in the way. 

“You’ve got your orders,” Nick says, and she nods, giving him a roll of the eyes for good measure, a reminder between friends of the value that orders have for her. But of course he knows. Nick maybe knows everything, more than she does, and it’s what makes her follow the rules, this idea that maybe, someday -- well. Maybe.

* * *

She notices maybe before they do, and certainly before they mean for anyone to notice. It’s small, at first: Sam raising an eyebrow at Steve’s choice of words, Steve sitting up straighter when it’s time to review Sam’s latest mission reports in the directorship meeting, the little in-jokes and shared abbreviations, the way they stand too close, too comfortable, in the small communal kitchen.

Maybe it’s just harmless flirting. Maybe. But Steve tracks Sam across a room like he’s hungry and afraid all at the same time, and Natasha feels something soft and sad and a little sorry as she realizes it. This isn’t loneliness, either; it’s closer to envy.

“You know,” she says, one afternoon when Steve has decided to hover again and she’s fed up, “I’m actually kind of glad things worked out how they did with Banner.”

“Oh yeah?” Steve says, failing so completely to seem uninterested that Natasha smiles. She’s toying with a wristband that Stark’s R&D nerds just worked up. It has a magnetic lock, much like Steve’s, and might allow her to electrify his shield in a battle. “Why, uh, how do you mean?”

“It’d be awkward. Being on the same team, trying to fight together, live together, all of that.” She doesn’t look over at him, just notices the way his posture stiffens, all of his weight shifting to the left, his breathing growing exact. “Sounds like a great way to smother each other, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says, then, more quietly, “I guess. Maybe.”

“We probably would’ve hated each other eventually.” She looks over at him and can’t tell if he knows that she knows. “It would’ve ended badly.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I really do,” she says, “since it’s already over.”

This time, he doesn’t hover: he just walks out.

* * *

A week later, she finds Sam on the roof, just sitting. His Falcon suit is boxed up next to him, although he’s still wearing the tough flight gear he uses in practice. With his arms across his knees, he’s not so big, really. Not like Steve, who can’t fold in to save his life, who always takes up all the space in the room just standing there, tall and strong and looking sure.

Natasha sits next to him, stares out at the gently waving trees. “Everything is so green here.”

Sam slides her a sidelong glance. “Yeah? Remind you of your man?” She grimaces, actually lets it hit her, and he just nods.

“He wasn’t mine.”

“Sure. Guy like that, probably all kinds of offers,” Sam says, easy, light, and she laughs.

“Size matters,” she says, and he laughs, too.

It’s nice, actually, to sit with Sam and not talk about it, to be allowed to joke and get away with avoidance. It’s why she can’t visit Clint right now, can’t take that vacation that Steve thinks would be a good idea, can’t stand too long in Fury’s office or spend a weekend with Stark and Pepper in Santa Monica. Everyone close to her is too close. 

Sam, though. He’s new. He’s sturdy, and likeable, and just as human as she is. That’s something.

“You going out on this thing tomorrow?” he asks.

She nods. “You?”

He shrugs. “I just do what I’m told.”

“I’ve been meaning to try that,” she says, and he grins.

“I just bet.”

* * *

It’s a little weird to be understood, she thinks. She’s always been able to fit in, but here, it’s more than that. Sam laughs when she tells a joke; Wanda watches her spar with frank admiration; Vision and Rhodes help her upgrade a shock kit with real enthusiasm. It’s strange. It’s good. 

Bruce was always a little distant, hesitant, and she’d liked that, the way he looked so soft and absent and idle and hid everything big and mean. Now, though, they pull out the big and mean every day, they talk about it, they plan for and with and around it. They celebrate it in each other.

It’s strange. 

It’s mostly good.

* * *

One night, late, walking off the jet after a quick in-and-out to D.C., she sees Steve pause on the ramp and touch Sam’s shoulder, just lightly, a wait-a-minute touch that draws Sam to a sleepy standstill. Steve’s reviewing a tablet with Hill, and Sam just waits, eyes still half-closed. Then he and Steve walk off together, not touching or talking but close in a way that answers that question. 

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Natasha asks Sam, when they’re both lying on the mats, panting, after the next morning’s training session.

Sam looks over, then laughs, closing his eyes. He closes his eyes; a minute ago, she’d had her hands around his throat. “You figured it out already, huh? Well. Didn’t think he’d ever get up the nerve. Whatever talk you gave him --”

“I didn’t,” Natasha says. “Well. I didn’t mean to.”

“Uh-huh. Doesn’t matter, ‘cuz he got over it,” Sam says, grinning, wide and sure. “Did he ever.”

Natasha laughs and sits up, already starting to pull her hair back into place. “That’s good. It’s good. You two.”

“So far,” Sam agrees.

* * *

Two months later, they spend a solid week rousting a Hydra gang in Michigan. Natasha spends two days undercover, and once, when she’s standing at a copier, she wonders if Bruce would worry about her. She wonders if Steve and Sam worry about each other, then realizes she’s being ridiculous. Steve worries about everyone.

As she takes down the CEO with a quick flip that night, she thinks Bruce wouldn’t have worried half as much as she worries about him. There’s just no need.

* * *

They almost lose Steve in a fight over Minneapolis, of all places. His bike spins out and he’s thrown over a bridge, no big fall, but his foot catches on the stirrup and they almost can’t get him untangled in time. Natasha gives him mouth-to-mouth until he starts coughing up river water.

Sam holds his hand, and when Steve’s eyes flicker open, they search for his face.

“You got a thing about water,” Sam says, cupping Steve’s cheek, and Steve’s mouth lifts briefly before he passes out again. 

They get home, and Steve walks into the med bay, telling everyone he’s fine, and Sam goes up to the debriefing but looks antsy and drained the whole time. When everyone else is dismissed, Natasha waves off Fury’s attempt at a separate conference, goes back to her room, kneels in front of her couch, and presses her head into the soft velvet. She can feel Steve’s salty mouth under hers, his still chest against her hands, the red swirl of panic behind her own closed eyelids. What she wants, right then, is to touch, to be touched, to feel something but not everything.

She wants to want Bruce less, wants to be without that wanting.

She just wants to know where he is.

She just wants to know that he’s safe.

* * *

Steve makes it through half of an awkward speech telling the team that he and Sam are an item before Wanda interrupts to say, “It’s OK. Vision and I, too,” and that actually does surprise Natasha.

“I didn’t know anyone could sneak up on you,” Sam says, later, walking up behind her on the roof. He smells like gunpowder and grass stains, the superhero scents of spring. She wonders if Steve smells like that coming out of the shower.

“You didn’t.”

“I meant Wanda’s announcement.”

He sits next to her, his shoulder close. 

She’s surprised, again, when her face feels warm, and she looks up at the cloudless blue sky. It’s different everywhere, the sky, every place she’s ever lived: the gray-white sky of a cloudless day in Russia, the hemmed-in purples of the cities, and now this, this green-blue forest sky where she’s supposed to be home, for now. She’s been to Fiji. The sky there is open, gold, endless. 

“I’m not used to having friends,” she says, watching a thin white cloud begin to snake past.

“Kinda guessed that,” Sam says, his shoulder, solid, grounded, brushing hers. “But I guess you’ll have to adapt.”


End file.
